The author of A Little Life, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and a National Book Award Finalist, creates a propulsive triptych of stories a century apart, each featuring a similarly named cast of characters and a house in Greenwich Village's Washington Square.
In an alternate 1893, David Bingham's grandfather tells him that he alone of his three siblings, will inherit the home on Washington Square; David's brother and sister are each married to same-sex partners, and he feels torn between his lover, a music teacher, and a socially-appropriate suitor, both men. The year 1993 finds a different David Bingham as a Hawai'ian paralegal in a relationship with Charles Griffith, a senior partner at his firm; AIDS is ever-present in New York City. And a 2093 post-pandemic Manhattan finds New Yorkers living under a totalitarian regime. Hanya Yanagihara brilliantly links these three tales via themes of desire and reality, as well as freedom and bondage, both culturally and romantically.